Twisted Life of Lies
by Leona-Aurelia
Summary: <html><head></head>Introducing, Joker's newest assistant: Infinity. She is a sheltered girl... and a sociopath. She knew 'Joker' before his life fell apart and he took up that name and influenced his change.</html>
1. Prologue

Twisted Life Of Lies

"Wanna play a game?" Yes, that was how it was. The eight year old Klarissa had grown up playing game after game. There was no room for reality in her mind, since her world consisted only of the four room home she shared with her father and the games they played together.

Klarissa knew he went out and stayed out for long periods of time. She knew that he would come home either really happy with his pockets full of money- which he would usually spend some of on a new toy for her- or disturbed. He would go out back to beat on any durable bit of trash that was sitting in the local garbage dump, which was just behind their home. She could hear cursing, even screaming sometimes from her father out there, but she simply thought it was normal, so she hardly flinched. He had told her not to worry about it. If she asked if he was alright, he would simply smile at her and assure her it was fine. Klarissa's concern slipped away after the first few times of questioning him over his emotional state.

She didn't realize that she should have a mother around, since she never remembered having one. She couldn't remember having anything done for her, her first memories being of sitting on the floor playing with cards to entertain herself. Klarissa's father was her only other contact to the outside world, since he locked the house up before leaving, and part of their rules was to never go outside.

Klarissa always dressed in simple clothes: cute little sundresses or a pair of jeans with some solid colored t-shirt. Her father didn't spoil her in that department, but she didn't care. Since her mother hadn't been around, she never learned that girls typically enjoyed shopping for clothes. She was an adorable little girl, with deep jade eyes and hay-colored hair that had dimmed a bit from the years inside, and her skin was a nearly flawless pale. Thankfully for her father, she didn't seem to mind staying home all day and that her life revolved around him and the house. She kept it clean for him, which gleaned her his praise. He played games with her for hours whenever he came home happy. Though, when he came home angry, he just spared an affectionate pat her on the head before going over to the junkyard.  
>One day- her father was gone like he usually was and she was at home by herself- she met one of her father's "coworkers". She had always been told to hide away somewhere so that they couldn't see her, but had always been curious. After all, hiding meant that she couldn't see them, as well as them not being able to see her. Klarissa had never ever understood it, but she had done it because her daddy had told her to. That was one of the rules: never go against what daddy says to do. There was no room to complain, because if the rules were broken, the game would stop and boredom would ensue.<p>

She opened the door, since her father wasn't there to do so. The man that stood behind it was much taller than herself- probably about the size of her father as she could tell- but she didn't mind since feeling small was something she was used to. His face gave her the impression that he smiled a lot. Slight creases from the action already at the edges of his mouth and carving out his slightly plump cheeks. His hair looked like it had been dyed several different colors over the years, the layers of color acting like a timeline. There was no hairstyle present, essentially left to look like a mouse made a nest in it. His eyes appeared all black to her, though she supposed they must have been dark brown or something of that sort. He wore a nice leather jacket and black slacks, with a white collared shirt beneath it.

"Hello," she said, a sweet smile on her lips. "Are you looking for Daddy?"  
>"Is your daddy's name Keith?" the man asked, looking a little surprised. Kieth had a daughter? That was news to him. The man kept to himself, sure, but to not mention having a little one was being a little too secretive. Maybe he didn't like the girl.<br>"I think so. I always just call him daddy, though. All the people that come to talk to him call him 'Keith'." she responded. For her, it was nice just to have someone to talk to.  
>"Well then, yes, I'm lookin' for your father... where is he now?" he looked past her into the house, seeing if anyone was in there. Was this a trick to keep them at bay? Keith must be getting desperate to put his daughter to the wolves...<br>"I don't know. He just said he was going out. He leaves for a long time almost every day now... but at least he buys me toys sometimes on his way back home. It's nice." She clasped her hands behind her back, her smile turning into a bit of a grin. The thought of toys always brought her back to being more of the child she was. Doing all the housework that she did, sometimes she felt like she was a grown up already.  
>"How come we never see you when we come to talk to him?" It was something he honestly wanted to know. If Keith didn't like her, it'd be obvious in the way that she answered the question. The kid was strange, and he couldn't quite pin down what it was about her that struck him that way.<br>"He tells me to hide," Klarissa replied simply, shrugging slightly. "I do what Daddy tells me. But he never said I shouldn't answer the door if I'm home by myself..."  
>That was it: this kid was so well-mannered. It was almost unnerving to him. The kids he'd been used to were foul-mouthed and tried to break his car windows as he drove by because they knew what he was and what he might do to their families one day. "Well aren't you just tsuch a good girl," the man mused, crouching down in front of her."Can you tell me your name?"<br>"Daddy said I'm not supposed to tell strangers my name," she said, frowning a little as she thought about it, before perking back up. "But he didn't say anything about **fake** names! My daddy sometimes calls me 'my little infinity'. So, I guess you can call me that. Infinity." She nodded slightly, beaming at the fact she found a way to give this man a name to call her by. It was a little loophole to the rules she'd found, just like when she would go play in the backyard while her father was busy in the junkyard. If he couldn't see her or hear her, she'd get away with it.  
>"Well if we're giving out fake names, then I suppose I'll just have to do the same. I've been called 'Dangerfield'."<br>The little girl giggled. "Dangerfield? You mean like that famous guy?"  
>The man nodded, his smile now practically plastered onto his lips. Okay, this kid had him hooked. He'd have to have a talk with Keith when he could find him about hiding this girl from the guys. She was the most interesting kid he'd met in a very long time. In fact, probably the best one he'd ever met. "Yep. Just like that."<br>"Well then I don't like my name anymore, yours is better..." she murmured, thinking again of a different pet name her father called her. "Divadens. Yes. That's cooler. Divadens."  
>He echoed her, recieving a small nod of approval from the girl. That was one odd nickname. He knew a little about Keith, but to call his daughter something like that was just strange. "Like dividends, money you get back from stocks?"<br>The girl blinked, tilting her head after a moment. "I guess. Daddy never told me what it meant."  
>"Well, my most boring name's Jack Napier," he told her, his smile broadening a bit. Perhaps a good-hearted trick would work on the girl.<br>"Jack Napier," she mused, speaking slowly and deliberately to say it right. Something told her that this was a long way around to getting her actual name. She liked her nicknames better, since real names bored her, but she knew her actual name."My boring name... oh! That's Klarissa Jameson." She only had to think for a moment or two because it had been a while since a lady visited wanting to talk to her. She'd called her by that name, her 'real' name. It felt weird, talking to her, especially when she asked questions about she got along with her father.  
>"Klarissa. What a pretty name," Jack mused, patting the her on the head before going into his jacket pocket for something with the same hand.<br>Klarissa watched, tilting her head a little to try and see what he was pulling out.  
>"You give <strong>this<strong>," Jack told her, pulling out a Joker card from his jacket and holding it out to her, "to your daddy and I'll have the biggest lollipop you've ever seen waiting for you when you do, Ok?"  
>Klarissa nodded, smiling as she took the card and held it between her fingers in one hand. "Sure. I'll give it to him. I like candy, but I'm not supposed to have too much 'cause daddy says it'll rot my teeth."<br>"Which it will," Jack said, nodding affirmatively as he stood back up slowly and took a step back down the front walk. "But I won't be giving you too much; just a treat."  
>The Klarissa nodded, watching as Jack, left. He didn't seem mean and it made her wonder why her father had had her hide away from these kinds of people before.<br>Later that night, her father returned quite happy with himself. He had brought her back a big plush toy of what looked like a collie. She'd always wanted a dog but he'd always told her that they couldn't have one because of where they lived.

As always, little Klarissa met him at the door and smiled as she took the big toy from her father. She blinked, remembering the card. She struggled for a moment ot find it in her pocket, but soon pulled it out of her jeans. "A man came by to see you today, Daddy. He told me to give you this. And he said his name's Jack Napier."

Her father's smile faded slowly as he took the joker card from her hand and stared at it for a few long moments.  
>"Daddy, is something wr-"<br>"We're going to play a new game today, sweetie," her father told her quickly, pulling her free hand along with him into her room. "Get your suitcase packed. We need to leave soon. It's... a game like cops and robbers, except we're... like cops on the run. The robbers want to catch us instead of the other way around– but we can't let them catch us, sweetie, we just can't."  
>Klarissa nodded slightly and began packing up, hardly noticing as her father scrambled out of the room to do the same. He was back within twenty minutes, an expression on his face that she had never seen before. Klarissa was sitting on her bed with her bag packed and hugging her new stuffed doll to her chest. "I've thought of a name for her, daddy. I'll name her after you, I'll call her 'Keith'."<br>Her father smiled, though to Klarissa, something was different about it. The emotion the smile conveyed was clearly sadness. This was one of many times that she felt like she was missing something. Her father kept quite a few things from her, but she never asked. Her curiosity wanted to know, but asking questions never got a good response from him, so she let things continue as they were.

Her father nodded and motioned for her to follow him, which she did, without hesitation. He stopped at the door, turning back to his precious little girl and kneeling before her. She set down her things so he could clasp her hands in his. His face was serious, so she knew not to smile. "Now listen to me, my little Infinity," told her, "There's only one rule to this game besides the golden one. Only one more. Unless they call you your real name, you should run. If you can't run, you hurt them as much as you can. Use anything around you, don't think of them like people, but like those scary monsters you used to think were in the hallway closet."

Klarissa nodded, smiling a little just as an attempt to cheer her father up a little. "Yes Daddy. I understand," she said, nodding. "Unless somebody says my name then I run. I'll hurt them if I can't run."  
>"That's my good girl," Keith murmured, ruffling her hair affectionately, earning a giggle from the little girl. With that done, he stood up and opened the door, ushering her quickly to the car.<br>She watched the house as they pulled away, sighing softly. "Do you think we'll come back soon, daddy?"  
>"No, honey. I don't think we'll come back soon. But one day... One day we'll come back and live without having to play so many silly games."<br>Klarissa looked up at her father and cocked her head, a bit confused now. "But I like games…"  
>Keith sighed, shaking his head. "I know honey, I know." After that, he refused to say anymore, despite some attempts on Klarissa's part to get him to explain.<br>Klarissa wanted to look out the window- since she only ever went out in the car with her father when she needed to go see a doctor- but Keith told her to keep her head down. She didn't know why he told her to do such a thing, but she abided by the golden rule nevertheless. Soon they were passing beneath a bridge, and she only knew this by the muffled sound of the cars going above them and by a sudden lack of light. The darkness wasn't replaced by the light of the other side, instead she felt them stopping. Her father seemed upset, and Klarissa looked up. Her father wasn't about to have that, and snapped at her to get back down, to hide. Of course she did, but no sooner had he told her that did she hear her father struggling. She pushed herself farther down into her hiding spot in front of the back seats. Unfortunately her hiding didn't keep her from getting pulled out of the car by her ankles. She found herself being thrown down to the ground beside her father, who she already saw was being tied up. She moved to stop the men, only to get smacked down to the dirt.  
>"Don't hurt the girl," a man's voice rang out, making the man who had struck her jerk slightly as if he himself were struck.<br>Klarissa looked up, finally having enough of a clear head to pull herself up and grab at a nearby broken glass shard. She'd seen her father use a knife that he had at home to carve up foods before they ate, and this looked like just the sharp part of it. He'd told her it would hurt someone if it hit them, and she hadn't yet thought of running. A hand grasped the curve between her neck and shoulder tightly, which was one too many strange sensations. She whipped around, nailing the man just behind her in the leg with it. He stumbled backwards, crying out in pain. Some of the others just snickered, seeming not to care in the least that one of their own was injured. "Look, the kitten's flexing her claws," someone teased.

"Well I see you gave him the card," Jack said, stepping forward and smiling at her.

Klarissa put the glass shard back on the ground slowly, nodding as a smile crossed her lips. "Yes, just like you said I should," she told him.

"Klarissa!" Keith gasped, looking to his daughter with wide doe-brown eyes. "What are you doing? He didn't call you the right name! You're supposed to run!"  
>She turned to her father, a bit confused now. "But that is my name too, Daddy. You said so..."<br>The men that had been behind her father pulled him away and Klarissa was about to follow, that was before Jack had a gentle hold on her arm and pulled her up to her feet. "We've got to talk to your dad about a few things. Here, you go wait in my car right over there, okay? No one here's going to hurt you. I promise you can trust them. I'll be there in just a minute to take you to my house so I can give you that lollipop I promised you." Ah, the literal ploy of using candy to lure a child put into use. And working, as much of a shock as that was.  
>"Okay!" Klarissa told him, before she went with another of Jack's partners to his black sedan and hopped in, sitting back in the comfortable leather seats and humming slightly to herself while she waited.<br>They drove her a few blocks away while Jack took care of his 'business' with Keith. Jack hopped in the car with them when they came back, a reassuring smile on his face for Klarissa.  
>"Where's Daddy?" Of course that was the first question out of the child's mouth, giving him her characteristic head tilt as she asked it.<br>Jack closed the door behind him and the car began to move again as he put a hand to her head. "Your daddy told me that it was time for you to play a new game. He wanted me to play with you from now on, is that alright?" He didn't even know why he was doing this. The mob was going to have a few things to say about him taking in the kid of a guy deep in the read with bookies and sharks. For some reason, though, he felt like she needed to have another chance. And this was the only other chance that he could think up for her. At least now Claire wouldn't be on his case about having kids; she'd get Klarissa.  
>Klarissa took a while to reply, looking away and appearing sad for once. After a few long minutes she looked back to Jack, nodding. "Alright." The idea that her dad wouldn't be playing with her anymore was strange, but she liked Jack. He hadn't done a single thing bad to her and he'd talked a lot like her dad did. Trust and love grew on trees in her world.<br>"So we'll play a new game now," he told her, ruffling her hair. "There are only two rules for now. You can't ever answer the door at my house, no matter what. The other, and more important one, is that you do as I say, no matter what it is."


	2. A Show of Love

Chapter 1 :

A Show Of Love. . .

Infinity stayed with Jack for many years. She even ended up celebrating her eleventh birthday with him and his wife, Claire. She took care of Infinity while Jack was away on 'business'. After a time, the kind brunette actually did find herself liking the young girl. It was easy to like her; Klarissa was the sweetest child Claire had ever met. She had wanted her own child for quite a time, but Jack wouldn't have it. We still have plenty of time, he would always say, we're still young. Claire treated her little guest as if she were her own daughter.  
>They would play games for most of the day, especially when Jack finally came home. For some reason Jack, too, got quite into playing games. He would think up a new one almost every week. There were games that got her to do her chores and games that helped her learn. It only took the first two months for Infinity learn how to read and write. Even with those basics learned, Claire wanted her to actually attend school. Jack refused, saying that there was no way that she could handle something so 'real' with how she'd been raised. When he first contested this with Claire, she seemed confused. Once he told her the girl's reaction to her father's death, though, she understood. Infinity had only stared at him blankly and asked if that meant that he would never be able to play with her again.<p>

It seemed like Infinity was as important to Jack as his wife or a child that he would have had with her. It was a strange bond, Jack as a protector of the daughter of a man he had killed for 'business', and Infinity as an innocent but slightly strange girl.

The day was normal, other than the fact that Jack stayed away from home a little longer than usual. Normally, he was home by four or five in the evening, even if he did leave later for 'business'. Now it was almost seven and still Jack had not come home. Claire was hanging by the only phone they had in the house, in the kitchen. She paced while waiting, checking on her surrogate child. Infinity was safely back in her room and playing with a few dolls that Jack had gotten for her. For some odd reason, Infinity did not seem to realize how disturbing this scenario was for her adoptive mother.  
>The phone rang, and Claire answered it even before it had a chance to get through the first ring. Normally there was at least hushed talking, but there was nothing but silence that lasted until the cluck of the phone as she hung it up. Only a few minutes later when her foster mother entered her room with a complete urgency about her.<br>"You need to hide, sweetie," she told her. "Hide like we told you to and don't come out unless I or Jack comes to get you, alright?"  
>Infinity nodded, smiling at the idea of playing the hiding game, something that reminded her of her old life. Once Jack's wife was gone, Infinity hid under the bed, her back pushing firmly against the wall. At that point, Claire was back in the living room down the hall with a man from Jack's work. Still, Infinity had no idea what was going on, at least not until she heard a scream. Though the volume of the outcry dropped quickly, agonized whimpers wafted through the door to her ears. She did not move, even though she wondered what exactly was going on outside her room. One of the rules of the hiding game was not to give herself away unless Jack or his wife couldn't find her. She had to play by the rules, no matter what.<br>She listened carefully as the front door was promptly slammed and the whimpers of pain continued. Shuffling came to her ears after a little longer, and something banged into her door before jiggling the handle. Infinity curled up even more against the wall, doing her best to not make a sound that she was barely breathing. She was good at hiding; she always had been. The door opened, the only sound from it being from the bottom of the door scraping across the rough carpet and a glimpse of a woman's foot speckled with blood.  
>"Infinity?" the familiar female voice asked the room softly. She stumbled in, taking a look under the bed where she knew her young charge would most likely be hiding.<br>The girl's eyes widened for a moment as she felt shock at what she was seeing. Her beloved adoptive mother's face was dripping blood. Infinity could not tell why she was bleeding, nor why so badly. Nevertheless, she scrambled out from under the bed and tried to stop the bleeding with her own hands. Her caretaker's face was fighting itself for a chance to display both her agonizing pain and a boiling anger that Infinity had never seen before. Tears intermingled with the blood and slowly Infinity began to realize that she could not stop the hemorrhaging by herself. She rushed out of her room, her hands still covered in the viscous liquid, to try and find anything else that could help. After a time, she managed to bring down a box of band-aids and scamper back to her room.  
>"These'll help, Mommy," the young girl assured her as she got down on her knees beside the woman and began tearing through the packaging.<br>It took almost half an hour before Infinity finally get the bleeding to stop, the wounds sliced up on both corners of her mouth were covered with two layers of thick band-aids. The girl simply hugged that woman, seemingly unfazed that they were both covered in blood. "You'll be alright now, Mommy. We got you fixed up."  
>The woman was still crying, something she had never once stopped doing ever since Infinity had seen her after the stranger had left. Her body shook slightly with the tremors that her sobs elicited from her. She didn't reply to her adoptive child, though she did cling to her as she was embraced, her head resting on the top of the child's head.<br>It had been dark when the stranger came but it was pitch black when Jack finally returned home. His wife was sprawled out on the couch, watching over Infinity as she played a rather intense video-game on the living room's T.V. The game served to entertain her so that the woman did not have to speak and re-open her wounds. When Jack finally entered, Infinity paused her game and leapt up, running over to hug him. Her smiled at her, and started to ask where his wife was– before he stopped mid-sentence as he saw her on the couch and especially the band-aids on her cheeks.  
>"My god, Claire, what happened?" he asked, quickly moving over to her side and grasping her closest hand tightly in both of his.<br>Claire simply shook her head and nodded to Infinity, who had a very curious expression on her face.  
>Jack stood slowly, facing his young charge. "What happened, Infinity?" His voice was low and serious, and it made the girl's face contort into an expression of confusion.<em> This was still a game, right?<em> She was thinking to herself. _If it is why does Jack look so ... angry?_  
>Despite the girl's slight twinge of both confusion and fear, she answered him as best she could. "Well a stranger came by so Mommy told me to hide." She started off, looking to the woman sprawled on the couch and smiling sweetly. "I hid real well by the time I started hearing things. I wanted to come out because I heard Mommy scream, then she got a little quieter and I heard the front door slam shut. Mommy came to my room, but I thought it was the stranger, but when I heard Mommy call my name I relaxed and started to come out. When I saw her, Mommy was bleeding." The little girl paused her story to show where her mother had been cut. She put her fingers at the very edges of her mouth and puled them across her face to about the middle of her cheeks. "Mommy was cut, I think. But I got the band-aids and fixed her," she nodded to confirm her story, still smiling slightly.<br>Jack knew what had happened, and why they had done it, but he wasn't about to tell the eleven year old child why. She was the reason that his beloved wife had been assaulted– as punishment for his choice to take her in. Jack had refused to turn Infinity over to the mob's head. This was his punishment: ruining his pretty little wife. Oddly enough, he did not blame the young girl at all for his wife's predicament.

== == ==

They argued every day, and Infinity was beginning to wonder if they were still playing Jack's game. It seemed like Claire wasn't playing along, and that was what was making them disagree. The game changed completely one day. Jack told Infinity to come into the living room with a simple hand gesture.  
>"You're still just as beautiful as you have always been, Claire," Jack told his wife, though he turned around to face his adoptive daughter. He knelt in front of her, pulling something out of his pocket. What came out was a long pocket knife that barely looked like it could fit in the pocket it came from. Jack flipped it out expertly before handing it gently to her. "Here, here. I'll show you, Claire."<br>Infinity blinked, looking at the blade as she held the handle gingerly. She tilted it around all sorts of ways to look at it, clearly entranced by the sheen. It wasn't as if she hadn't seen one before, but she certainly hadn't been allowed to handle one before. She'd take all the time she could to ooh and ahh over it while she had it.  
>"Infinity," Jack said after a bit, helping her hold the knife right as he brought it closer to his face. "I'll stand perfectly still..." he started glancing back at his wife with a surprisingly gentle look to him before turning his attention back to Infinity. "And I want you to cut me just where Mommy got cut."<br>He held his adoptive daughter's hand so the blade of the knife was pressed against the very edge of his mouth. As he urged Infinity to push so the knife would cut him, blood came forth from the slice. It dripped slowly off his chin, trickling like a faucet left to drip.  
>His beloved wife, of course, was horrified at this sight. She was reliving her own attack in slow motion, temporarily paralyzed and utterly unable to speak. And besides that, she was completely appalled that Infinity expressed no emotion as she helped her husband. If anything at all, she seemed...enthralled by the whole experience. She was curious about this blood, about this new game that brought a new smell to her memories. The metallic smell and the thick, sticky liquid that everyone she played with had, somewhere inside them, something new and exciting to the little girl.<br>Jack did not even flinch as the blade sliced its way to the middle of his cheek. It was far enough, he decided, and stopped her there. Jack promptly changed sides before his wife could object. Any kind of resistance was the last thing on her mind. She was still stock still as she watched this twisted show of love from her husband. Infinity was no longer being guided, but the cuts she made were amazingly clean. She stopped when Jack held up his hand and she scurried off to clean the blade in the kitchen sink. Nothing that was that shiny should be stained.  
>As Jack stood, his wife took two steps back. Her husband was now a horrible sight to behold. The blood that seeped out of his wounds slipped down his neck and soaked his shirt. Her eyes widened. "Jack, you shouldn't have done that to yourself. You didn't have to," she managed to breathe.<br>"Yes, I did," he argued, his voice as calm as it had been through the whole ordeal. "You wouldn't believe me before. But now I've shown you, Claire. I've shown you just how much I'd give up for you. How much I'd do to make you happy..." His wounds continued to bleed, and it was a wonder that he hadn't passed out from the outflow. The shirt he wore now stuck to his chest, the blood that saturated it making it stick to his skin.  
>That cracked the dam of shock that had kept Claire's emotion at bay. "You think this would make me <strong>happy<strong>, Jack? You think by doing this to yourself you would make **my** pain less intense? Are you insane?" Her yelling drew Infinity from the kitchen, and she watched as the drama unfolded with a curious expression on her face. The knife was left behind on the kitchen sink.  
>"Yes, and it will. I promise," Jack was trying desperately to soothe her. He could see his attempts were failing because every step he took towards his beloved wife made her step back even further. "Just calm down..."<br>"Calm down? Calm down?" Claire snapped, shaking her head vigorously. Her path was very clear: she was heading for the master bedroom. "You **maimed** yourself, and what's worse: you had Infinity help you!"  
>Before Jack could get a hold of his wife, she had sealed herself in their room. Fumbling and many other noises came through the door. She was getting something together, but what, only the terrified Jack seemed to know. "No, darling, please!" Jack said. The tone of his voice was completely foreign to Infinity. He was begging, begging for his wife to stay.<br>It was only a few minutes before Claire emerged, suitcase in hand. She started rushing to the door, ignoring Jack's pleading along the way– at least until he gripped her arm. As soon as she felt that, her whole body reacted. She turned, striking him sharply across the face. "Stop it, Jack! I've dealt with so much for you… this… this is the last straw."  
>Jack stood in shock, still bleeding, as the sting of his wife's slap rocketed through his body. Most of the pain, however, was in his failing heart. He seemed like nothing more than an empty shell as he watched his wife leave him. In a few more moments, he flopped to the ground after his knees and legs failed him. Infinity scampered to his side, holding him up as best she could. "Jack...?" she asked him softly, trying to get him to at least look at her.<br>It was several long minutes before he did just that. His eyes watered quickly as he weakly raised his head to look at her. "Are you going to leave too, Infinity? Do I frighten you, too?" he asked, his voice hoarse.  
>Even the tone of his voice made the little girl feel as if she should start to cry right along with him even though sadness was completely foreign to her. She shook her head, obviously quite confident in the answer. "Of course not, Jack. I love you. You've been really nice to me. You always have, even when you first met me. I can't think a reason I'd want to leave you..."<br>The words seemed to render the grown man speechless. When he finally did move, he just hugged her tightly as if he was afraid to let her go. "Then I'll keep doing that," he managed to get out after a time. "We'll play games forever. The city will be our playground, Infinity. Would you like that?"  
>She seemed a bit confused for a moment, but soon enough a smile crossed her face and she nodded. "That's a huge playground. I'll love it." Infinity did not understand what was happening, but it was clear her protector was changing. For good or bad, however, she was not sure yet.<p> 


	3. The Emergence of a Genius

**Chapter 2**

_The Emergence of a Genius_

Jack had kept his promise over the next six years, taking Infinity with him wherever he went to live in the city of Gotham. He would keep them fed and keep up the rent for their apartment with money that was of dubious origin. Once he was well-known in the area he would simply move onto another part of town – after all, the police had the mob to deal with and hardly ever pursued the hundreds of cases of minor crimes.

He would buy her games, whatever she wanted—though she did not usually ask for anything at all. Though there was quite a strange development when Jack bought a computer: Infinity became obsessed and would hardly leave her place in front of the screen.

Normal parents would have given their children Leapfrog games to play on their computer, instead, Jack had any kind of virtual violent game imaginable. He would play it for a while, showing Infinity how to play, then let her take over, praising her for getting head-shots and merely referring to the virtual men she was slaughtering as 'bogies'. Just like the army, except for two crucial differences: it was all virtual killing, and Infinity was being taught that taking the lives of others was simply entertainment. Death was like everything else in her world now: fake. They would just re-spawn somewhere else and she could kill them again and again, Jack assured her. The fun would never end. Well, it would never end as long as Jack was there. Really it seemed that that was the real reason why Infinity stayed and why she loved him—though she really had no concept of what 'love' was, besides the 'love' her father had shown to her.

After the games became a usual and perhaps slightly boring amusement, she began to ask for books about computer coding. He did get the books she wanted, and she immediately began to read. If anything, that seemed to make her even more obsessed with this new and amazing virtual world. In most parental figures, this would have been quite an alarming sight, but Jack; now calling himself by his trademark card, "The Joker", saw it as an infinite resource to intended.

If Infinity was the genius that her budding obsession was promising to make her, he could utilize that in every single place in Gotham. He let her absorb everything and continued to nurture their playful bond over the years that she poured over those books and tinkered away with the computer.

At first it was just making little messages pop up on the screen like, "Hi! :3" or, "I 3 You!" instead of the usual warning or error message. Little by little, however, Infinity became more daring; she started hacking into private servers, relishing the thrill of having to cover her tracks so that no one could trace where her home-made virus was coming from. One seemingly dreary day, Infinity called Jack in to see what she was doing—and to Jack's delighted shock, she was showing him the open network of the FBI. He had no idea how she had managed to bypass all the encoded passwords and wormed her way through the supposedly air-tight system, but she had. It was rather clear by his expression that he was thrilled and quite proud of his charge. Now, of course, she was not quite as young as she used to be. By now she was almost seventeen and eager to help Jack, and now that she knew so much about the virtual world, she could easily do just that.

"Uhm, Jack?" she asked, turning to look at him with those precious emerald orbs of hers.

"Mhm?"

"I want to play your games with you, but I can't do much with the things I have right now. Just this computer isn't enough to help. I need at least a laptop, preferably the most recent model, a simple radio transceiver, audio and visual chords. Those are the chords that have the yellow, white and red ends to black cased wires. A wireless internet modem and wherever I work there has to be at least a phone jack if not a cable jack."

"That's fine," he told her, his characteristic grin on his face as he kissed her forehead with a dramatic and noisy smooch. "I'll have plenty of cash to buy you whatever you want after I win my next game."

He had planned a bank heist earlier that week and it would go down no matter what now because he had to get her everything. With her help he could do whatever he pleased, and have her be contented at the same moment. She had never been a worry for him, but then again after he simply let go of most of the 'normal' priorities in life, there wasn't much room in his footloose-and-fancy-free life for worry. And now it was especially true, she wasn't going to be a worry; she was going to be an asset, a very intelligent asset at that.

"Alright," Infinity conceded. "Just make sure you win."

"Of course," he replied, motioning wide with his arms to further enhance the point. "Have I ever lost?"

"No. But because of that I'm a really sore loser. That and I don't like the rules for the game I have to play if you are around police."

He tilted his head a bit, putting a hand to his chin and stroking it in a thespian pose of thinking. Finally he knelt down next to her and said, "well how about this: once you get all the equipment that you need, we'll come up with a better game. Alright?"

Infinity pursed her lips a little in an adorable imitation of a pout before finally replying. "Alright."

"That's my girl." Jack told her, quite happy with his handiwork in their relationship.

Even without her help, Jack didn't have to bother too much with the bank heist. His 'people' showed up promptly and filled the spaces they needed to fill. It didn't bother him at all that he turned his gun on each of them in turn- they were in it for their own cut. Jack was in it for Inifinity, and to show this city its' true colors. Show them Batman's true colors. Oh yes, he'd already had a few small brushes with the 'superhero' back in his minor crime days, but as he 'moved up in the ranks' he had yet to be caught by anyone again; unintentionally, at least. The joker was a force to be reckoned with; and even more so soon, when Infinity could officially help him. There would be nothing to hold them back- Jack could charm his way through anything, or simply blow it to smithereens with a menacing and yet still clown like laugh; Infinity, once he set her up with all the equipment she needed, would have no trouble making him an 'invisible man' as far as electronics go. From then on, heists and major operations would be easy.

Perhaps this was a good time to start putting money in the budget for cronies. Or building a massive evil lair- since his ultimate target was, after all, a 'superhero'; he had to be a 'supervillain' right? And all 'supervillains' had a massive, evil, secret lair. Ah but such thinking could wait: right now he had to go shopping. Goodness, he couldn't wait to see the smile on Infinity's face as he brought her all she wanted! Maybe this was what Santa felt like? Ah, but he was better than Santa, he was her everything.

Now, to the store!


	4. Unleashing the Games

**Chapter 3**

Unleashing the Games

It had been many years since she'd been in her father's home, but the games never stopped. While she had eagerly absorbed the intricacies of electronic technology, there was no need to continue the games outside her head. After having played video games for so long, she treated the coding like it was a game as well. She would talk aloud to herself about her progress:

"Line finished—ten points!"

"Achievement Unlocked: Coding Tornado!"

"Oops, coding mistake! Five point deduction!"

These things continued as she learned and when the day came that she was to finally help Jack, she was more than eager to. By then, she'd figured out a 'point system' for him as well—well, whenever she could watch his movements remotely, at least. She had a direct connection to him with a tiny earpiece in his right ear and a mic attached to his collar. Infinity had a larger set up, with headphones and a wrap around mic like you'd see on the head of many an online console player.

The strong hum of machines lulled Infinity into a sort of trance of contentment as she worked away in a flurry of fingertips at a keyboard, only broken by the times she had to roll her office chair to another side of the van she was stationed in to alter some of the manual switches needed to effect her current task. Coming back to her workstation with her precious keyboard and plethora of monitors, she sighed happily.

As it tended to happen, the moment that she felt as if she could lean back to stretch, she got the signal. A simple click on the mic she had given Jack. "Aye, aye, cap'in!" she cried, grinning as she went right back to work. He needed her to loop the footage through the cameras at city hall, which was easy enough because she'd been recording for the last two hours so that it looked somewhat realistic when she set up the loop and kept the actual camera feeds on her monitors. She leaned back, watching as he completed the next task of their quest.

Today, "Joker" was wearing a dark purple suit. If one were to have enough time to ask him, he would simply reply: it was both his 'taste' and his favorite color. Aside from the strange choice in attire and the scars that he took no time to try and cover up, he looked fairly normal with his barely brushed brown hair and thin build. The two guards that had been posted to monitor the screening station in the lobby were no problem. Within moments of him innocently slipping through the metal detector and setting it off, he'd brought out a stun gun and hit both his intended targets. They fell to the floor within minutes of each other. That's what happens when you have Infinity modify them so they were capable of firing two sets of stuns instead of one. There was hardly a day where he wasn't grateful for some or another bit of tweaking she'd done.

"Stun gun accuracy rate: 100%!" Infinity remarked cheerfully. It wasn't as if they couldn't have shot the guards—it was just quieter to stun them than to shoot them, silencer included.

"Dear, if you're going to give me stats like that, wait 'till I've finished up." Jack mused, craning his head up to look into the camera on the corner of the ceiling back by the door before carrying on.

"Okay!" It seems that nothing was going to get her down today, not that much ever did.

There weren't too many people around, as there was a 'meeting of the minds' in the mayor's meeting room. That, of course, was the reason they were there. While they were busy, Jack intended to have a peek at the mayors' office and pull quite the stunt. He'd have Infinity scramble or encode any interesting documents that she came across once he placed a wireless USB connector into his precious computer. Sure it didn't get them money, jewels or video games… but they didn't need those things as they regularly did small heists for 'fun'. This was going a step further into chaos, and Jack already liked the taste of it.

Infinity, meanwhile, spun about in her chair with quite the happy grin on her face. "Wheeee~!" she exhaled, only pausing in her play to look up at the monitors for a few moments. The game didn't allow her much time to get distracted, as she soon heard the familiar tap at Jack's collar mic. She sat up, rolling her chair over to the keyboard once more.

"Ready?" she could hear over the mic. There weren't any cameras in the mayor's office, aside from the one on his laptop, so she got quite the up close and personal view of Jack as he inserted her wireless transfer device.

"Of course," she said, saying so as if it were a 'duh' statement. "Scramble encryption engaged!" With that, she got to her main part in this game.

There weren't many interesting files, at least not according to her skimming of his C drive and My Documents. But she supposed it wouldn't matter if she just scrambled a few or all of them: and besides, all of them was more fun. She broke coding lines here and there in all of his Office files so his Excel spreadsheets would malfunction in their calculations, his PowerPoints wouldn't take cues if he clicked his mouse and then finished off by setting things in Word to translate to Latin after breaking code for many of the layout options he had selected. This process didn't take any more than five or ten minutes and Jack was more than ready to go by the time she stopped her furious typing and spoke once more.

"Disengaged. This side quest is over!" Infinity told him, still quite happy with herself.

"Good job, Infinity," Jack mused, taking out her wireless adapter before taking his leave of the office. She was glad to be able to see him on cameras once again as he exited into the hallway. "Give me the score while I drive us home."

"Roger, roger!" She confirmed, nodding her head before leaning back to wait. She'd only need to flip the looped feed back to normal recording once he was out of sight of all the cameras, anyway.

After a few moments, Infinity knitted her brows at a sound that she couldn't determine. It was from outside the van, but other than that she had nothing. She sat up straight once more, but as she did she was thrown to the side as the van was violently hit and turned over into the wall beside it. Her mind, normally whirling with ideas and code, went blank as she felt a hot pulse shoot through her body.

Jack had taken to skipping as he went right past the guards, still knocked out from his stun gun that he'd simply left there with them. His step was halted, however, as he heard a loud crack on the side of the building. Tilting his head a little, he investigated through the door which he was to use to get out and back to Infinity. As he turned the handle and began to push the door open, he realized the move was difficult. It took him putting his full weight against the door to get it to give a metallic groan while slowly opening. "Infinity?" he asked, actually feeling a sensation that hadn't crossed his mind since Clare had left him: fear. "Infinity?" he called again.

There was nothing except a crackling as he got himself through the door and closed it behind him. As he turned to see where the van should have been parked, he found it had been thrown into the brick side wall and it was alive with arcs of electricity. "Infinity!" he gasped, the 'game' vanishing as reality came crashing down on him like the van had done to his precious little girl. At first he tried to climb into the back and get her, but as the sparks increased all he could manage was to rock the vehicle to its' feet before hopping into what was left of the driver's seat and hauling off.

It wasn't until he'd taken out Infinity's comatose body from the van and seated it in a plush leather chair back home that he could even figure out what had gone down. Jack sat himself down on a couch next to the supportive chair to figure out what in the hell had happened. He stared at the television with a blank expression on his face as he listened to the night's 'special report'.

"Even Gotham City's city hall isn't safe, apparently, as a team of thief and hacker went on a rampage through the building and making light work of any security measures."

It was meaningless to him. The only thing the woman could possibly tell him that would be of interest was who 'came to the rescue'. Who did that to Infinity?

"Our sources tell us that it was Batman who ensured the safety of those that had been in the meeting during the time of the crime. He was only being able to chase off the offenders instead of catching them and, as always, didn't stay to be caught by our cameras or interviewed by our reporters."

"Batman." Jack echoed. "The Bat." he said, this time a bit louder and with a little chuckle to follow. "Batty, Bat, Bat…" he started to enjoy saying it. He nodded rhythmically to himself as if he were rocking himself back and forth, his grin returning to his face once again with a quick glance over at Infinity.

"You led me to him," he murmured, going over to her and putting his hands to each side of her face. He used his thumbs to pull up the skin on each side of her mouth. "You should be smiling! You led me to him, this …. this 'Batman'. You can't play anymore, be **he** can."

He pulled his hands away and her head lolled forward limply as he walked a few paces away. "I think you've upgraded me! Dear, you were fun, but you've made me see the light!" He raised his hands to the ceiling, crying out, "Ah, sweet chaos, you fair new mistress!"

**Author's Note:**

**Thank you all for reading and I hope you have enjoyed your little foray into my strange mind.**

**As it stands now, this is the end. I have contemplated carrying this onward or changing this many times... but I have come to the conclusion that this is best. For now. Who knows what strange things my mind might make me do. . .  
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**Again, thank you all for indulging/reviewing my romp into sociopathy.  
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